carbohydrate

The definition of a carbohydrate is an organic compound that occurs in living tissues or food and that can be broken down into energy by people or animals.

Sugar is an example of a carbohydrate.

carbohydrate

any of certain organic compounds, including the sugars, starches, and celluloses, which usually have the general formula C(HO): carbohydrates are subdivided into monosaccharides, disaccharides, etc., and form an important class of foods in animal nutrition, supplying energy to the body

Origin of carbohydrate

carbo- + hydrate

carbohydrate

noun

Any of a group of organic compounds that includes sugars, starches, celluloses, and gums and serves as a major energy source in the diet of animals. These compounds are produced by photosynthetic plants and contain only carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, usually in the ratio 1:2:1.

Sentence Examples

The steps which lead from the appearance of formaldehyde to that of the first well-defined carbohydrate are again matters of speculation.

Brown and Morris in 1892 advanced strong reasons for thinking that cane-sugar, Ci2H22O11, is the first carbohydrate synthesized, and that the hexoses found in the plant result from the decomposition of this.

The first visible carbohydrate formed, one which appears so rapidly on the commencement of photosynthesis as to have been regarded as the first evidence of the setting up of the process, is starch.

Starch, indeed, wherever it appears in the plant seems to be a reserve store of carbohydrate material, deposited where it is found for longer or shorter periods till it is needed for consumption.

This energy is obtained especially by the chioroplastids, and part of it is at once devoted to the construction of carbohydrate material, being thus turned from the kinetic to the potential condition.